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The tsantsa was displayed in the Willet Science Center at Mercer University before it was placed in the university’s small cultural museum.

The Mercer researchers, who had no previous experience with shrunken heads, completed a CT scan to examine the tsantsa in minute detail and created 3-D renderings that allowed them to take in the shape of the head, its features and the stitching along the scalp.

In 1942, James Harrison, then serving in the Army Air Forces, got his hands on the tsantsa while he was in Ecuador.

In memoirs, he described an interaction he had with men who spoke a language in the Chicham linguistic family in which he traded coins, a pocketknife and military insignia for the tsantsa.

“Anyway, they had two shrunken human heads,” Mr. Harrison, who would go on to become a biology professor at Mercer University, wrote in his memoir, recalling how he had traded with the men for the tsantsa.